Summer will always be my favorite season, even as my sweat glands kick it up a notch with each passing year. I have always adored that blanketing feeling that heat gives you, wrapping around your whole body, though it's understandable why others hate it. There's this certain shine that everything has and the whole world looks way brighter and everything is so green. Things are no longer springing: they've sprung and are showing their full luster.

Because of our school days, Summer will forever have this connection to freedom that no other season provides. We all need to hold jobs through the Summer at some point, so that freedom is not in permanence, but regardless I still feel an overwhelming liberation when this season returns. For me the heat is a reward for enduring Winter. The outdoors are actually opened to you once more, as opposed to that isolation that comes with the rigid days of January and February, demanding that you remain indoors through the blistering days and nights.

As much grief as Winter has given me, I'm surprised at how much my opinion of that season has changed since childhood. Some days, while I still lived in White Plains, I would be walking down Mamaroneck Avenue to my place ona winter day (or night), bundled up and walking against cold, whipping winds. Most days I wasn't particularly happy about the weather, and would hide under as many jackets as I could fit into, but on a handful of occasions, I would drop my hood and let the cold air and winds encircle me. My nose and ears and the rest of my face would protest by activating the pain receptors inmy nerves, and yet sometimes I would reach that point and would be somehow...comfortable. Something about that sting that a cold breeze gives you became a welcome feeling. It's afunny thing to realize when I, as a young man who, as a child, would have wished cold weather away had I rubbed a magic lamp.

Though I don't have much to say about Autumn or Spring, I do have reservations with the former and appreciation of the latter. As attractive as Autumn is, knowing that it is a prelude to months of unpleasant weather has made it difficult to enjoy. Spring is obviously a step in the right direction, but being littered with winter-like days and often hampering rain spells, I still find myself waiting for Summer as season long. However,even if I dislike the vast majority of Winter and prefer Summer over Autumn and Spring, I know that it would feel too strange to live with just Summer. A tropical island sounds like a great place to live for a while, but there is a balance that I've come to feel upon experiencing all four for so long. The need to change with the seasons does the body and mind good: it opens us to adaptation and instills valuable discipline. Then when the cycle is complete and it is once again your favorite season again, you feel you've earned it after enduring the wait, and more importantly, your least favorite season.